Invidious (The Marked, #2)

by Bianca Scardoni

The beautiful boy from my dreams turned out to be nothing more than a trickster. An illusion I was too blind to see through. He played me right from the start, used me for his own personal gain, and then threw me down to the Gates of Hell when he was done with me, never bothering to look back once. Not even to see if I had stuck the landing.

“He wants to create an army of undead and come out of the shadows. An army of Revenants that will rise and fall to his every whim. Walking immortals that would be programmed to do one thing for him—overtake the world. Town by town, city by city—”

conversations and social mixers weren’t exactly an option anymore, but reading always was. It quickly became my way out; my escape from captivity. I didn’t have to live inside my pain anymore. I could live inside my books, each one taking me further and further away from the barred windows that held me prisoner.

With his head cocked to the side, he tapped his thumb on the table and watched me, studied me, read me like an open diary. The truth was right there on the tip of his tongue, peeking through like a sliver of sunlight spilling through a crack. I just had to chip at the edges a little more, push a tiny bit harder.

My anchor had chipped, cracked, rotted away to the bottom of the ocean, leaving me lost and stranded in the open sea alone.

“I love you with the kind of love that isn't even love anymore. It's more than love. It's my entire soul. It's everything that I am or will ever be, and nothing will ever change that—not even Hell on earth.”

But not this time. This time, I was going to save myself, and maybe, just maybe, the world too. We

“You’re everything that’s right in this world,” he answered without hesitation. “You’re kind and beautiful and selfless. You’re the only reason I fight for my future,” he added quietly, wiping away my tears with his thumb. “Kind of like the rainbow that comes after a storm.”

Everyone’s afraid of something, Jemma. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re alive. It takes real courage to feel that fear and do it anyway.”

His lips crashed against mine, knocking the wind right out of my entire world.

When he pulled back, I found myself staring into his eyes, into his soul, never feeling closer to any one person before in my entire life. I could see the love he had for me—I could feel it right there in my bones—and it burned hotter than the heat of a thousand suns. “I'm scared, Trace.

Saturday came draped in an ethereal fog that spread over the town like a gathering of lost souls. There was something in the air, something sinister hissing in the wind, whispering as though it knew the town's secrets and sought to make them known to me. I